Remove investor-matching-program
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BE 2.0: Iterate for Greatness

Paul G. Silva

Each iteration brought valuable lessons that shaped what eventually became a thriving, scalable mentorship program. Iteration #1: High-Value, but Unsustainable Our first approach was simple: hand-match startups with mentors for one-on-one meetings. If we didn’t fix it, the program was at risk of failing altogether.

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BE 2.0: When Your BHAG Forces Innovation

Paul G. Silva

We challenged many “well-known truths” about accelerator programs and embraced new research on the Wisdom of Crowds : “Expert” Evaluation? Traditional wisdom: Only veteran judges can evaluate startups. Our innovation: Each judge got their own pool of money to invest however they wanted.

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How VCs, Accelerators, and Coworking Spaces Put Communities in Buildings vs. Buildings in Communities

This is going to be BIG.

It needs to go house to house--founders and employees getting matched through individual e-mail intros, deals happening over handshakes, and startups getting recruited into your ecosystem one at a time. When communities lack a critical mass of fulltime investors, you get a lot of inefficiency. What about your academic programs?

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Tattoos and YCombinator Demo Day

This is going to be BIG.

Similarly, picking seed investors for your first startup in and around the craziness of an accelerator demo day can be just as scarring over the long term. Trivia question: What active startup investor has the most tats? ). I was stunned. Emma picked her head up and flashed me an equally perplexed look. They need attention.

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Outbound VC Dialing Programs – Total Disrespect for Entrepreneurs

Both Sides of the Table

I’m an investor at [Big Name, Large Fund VC] and recently came across [Your Company]. There is no chance they’re going to invest and it’s not even a close match. Many of the growth equity firms have had outbound dialing programs for years. What disrespect they show founders / CEOs with these programs.

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Anatomy of an Innovation-friendly School

This is going to be BIG.

They have flexibility on programming, access to space, and can supplement curicculum in a world where official curicculum change takes years. If you're not matching the students that want to create an online business with computer science students or kids from your design school, you're wasting their time. Kick the faculty out.

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This Week in Venture Capital – Episode 2

Both Sides of the Table

They want to monetize the Twitter stream via contextual search matching. The investor isn’t disclosed (or I haven’t seen it) but it’s rumored to be DST, the Russian investors who invested in Zynga and Facebook (at a $10 billion valuation). The investors are some of the best in the Valley.